Margaret Fuller Quotes

154 Sourced Quotes

A many-colored light flows from our sun;
Art, 'neath its beams a motley thread has spun;
The prison modifies the perfect day;
But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
And cast once more on life a pure white ray.
Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest friend I find.

Margaret Fuller
Let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine herself

Margaret Fuller
The public must learn how to cherish the nobler and rarer plants, and to plant the aloe, able to wait a hundred years for it's bloom, or it's garden will contain, presently, nothing but potatoes and pot-herbs.

Margaret Fuller
The day wears heavily, — why, then, ignore it;
Peace is the soul's desire, — such thoughts restore it;
The truth thou art, — it needs not implore it.

Margaret Fuller
No temple can still the personal griefs and strifes in the breasts of its visitors.

Margaret Fuller
There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see — I think that is enough to say about them...

Margaret Fuller
The critic... should be not merely a poet, not merely a philosopher, not merely an observer, but tempered of all three.

Margaret Fuller
These were American ladies, i.e., they were of that class who have wealth and leisure to make full use of the day, and confer benefits on others.

Margaret Fuller
In times of old, as we are told,
When men more child-like at the feet
Of Jesus sat, than now,
A chivalry was known more bold
Than ours, and yet of stricter vow,
Of worship more complete.

Margaret Fuller
What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded.

Margaret Fuller
Let me stand in my age with all its waters flowing round me. If they sometimes subdue, they must finally upbear me, for I seek the universal, — and that must be the best.

Margaret Fuller
They [the Irish] are looked upon with contempt for their want of aptitude in learning new things; their ready and ingenious lying; their eye-service. These are the faults of an oppressed race, which must require the aid of better circumstances through two or three generations to eradicate.

Margaret Fuller
The character and history of each child may be a new and poetic experience to the parent, if he will let it.

Margaret Fuller
Knights of the Rosy Cross, they bore
Its weight within the heart, but wore
Without, devotion's sign in glistening ruby bright;
The gall and vinegar they drank alone,
But to the world at large would only own
The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light.

Margaret Fuller
Our desires, once realized, haunt us again less readily.

Margaret Fuller
Every fact is impure, but every fact contains in it the juices of life. Every fact is a clod, from which may grow an amaranth or a palm.

Margaret Fuller
The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose.

Margaret Fuller
Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil.

Margaret Fuller
A man who means to think and write a great deal must, after six and twenty, learn to read with his fingers.

Margaret Fuller
We cannot have expression till there is something to be expressed.

Margaret Fuller
The soul of the great musician can only be expressed in music.

Margaret Fuller
There is some danger lest there be no real religion in the heart which craves too much daily sympathy.

Margaret Fuller
All great expression, which on a superficial survey seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it.

Margaret Fuller
Our friends should be our incentives to right, but not only our guiding, but our prophetic, stars. To love by right is much, to love by faith is more; both are the entire love, without which heart, mind, and soul cannot be alike satisfied. We love and ought to love one another, not merely for the absolute worth of each, but on account of a mutual fitness of temporary character.

Margaret Fuller
You see how wide the gulf that separates me from the Christian church.

Margaret Fuller
Tragedy is always a mistake; and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases to be pathetic to us so soon as the sun is high enough above the mountains.

Margaret Fuller
Man can never come up to his ideal standard. It is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher as it goes from strength to strength, still upward and onward. The wisest and greatest men are ever the most modest.

Margaret Fuller
The Greeks saw everything in forms which we are trying to ascertain as law, and classify as cause.

Margaret Fuller
The only woman to whom it has been given to touch what is decisive in the present world and to have a presentiment of the world of the future.

Margaret Fuller
If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.

Margaret Fuller